a collective dream journal project

Category Archives: freedom

We must use the alien technology. In the real quiet air of the salon you wanted to stay. The people were in place but filling the air with self un-poisoned by some erractic music. They were filled with a self-possession that stills people like jazz mutes the motion and they wore fedoras and stares; the whole thing of it you liked. We sat and had conversations while it rained. Alien food, filets, and pink almost creamed roe. A green cat stared, a tiny neonate on a lap peered over darkened wood. Tea brewed. The woman with silver embellishments and turquoise, darked eyes, went back to sleep in the hotel room for five days of sleep, happy song on her lips to be alone. I held cards in my hand and tried to say we must never say what we saw here. I was corrected. We must share the technology. IN an instant, almost a lump in my throat I saw why. It was a series of wooden rails heading skyward in a factory. There was a whirring and a flapping of tiny wooden flaps. I nailed in nails. It was so simple and yet it had a perfection I cannot name. I watched her leave to go sleep. Her beauty and self-suficiency were inside me like a memory. I stood shaking the blue skirt filled with cranberry paisley, and silver near a mirror above a small wooden table. I went out into the darkness and entered a convenience store somewhere at midnight on a hill where you could feel the earth larger than the buildings;a manna pool around it’s concrete shell. It was one of those places that is respite because it has human build to it in a place of large earth-dark forces, where wisps of heather, and moor grass even appearing as spirits in the halogen lights. Inside past the smoked bullet proof glass, the proprietess behind her small packs of wares, a larder of tiny pills, and impersonal cartons of condoms, or advil(either really). I turned and the tiny shack opened into the dim almost waxy, paraffin of music venue floors. Wooden equipment ramps, signage indicating the temporal atmosphere of an occasion. I saw pin up magnets and then I talked to the woman with red lips and her name was Susanna Lou or some other staged, two-part name. She invited me somewhere to perform.

I am with a woman, she is dressed up fancy, in a short black skirt and black top. She is sitting to my left in a dimly lit, outdoor cafe. It is night. Before us is a giant glass cylinder that is partitioned once down the center. There are two tubes snaking out of it that have long syringes attached to their ends. A waiter approaches us and asks if we have decided on our dose. My head is foggy. I point to something on the decorative, hard-bound menu, as does the woman. Moments later he begins pouring a bright yellow fluid into my side of the vat, and then a cobalt blue one into my partner’s. He says that one liter each should be sufficient. I’m nervous, she isn’t. We are supposed to stick the syringes into the veins of our hands — I have never had an intravenous drug before. There’s a lot of fluid in that vat. A lot of fluid. But I rationalize that this venue specializes in this experience, so I settle my tension and ask the waiter to stick me with the needle. Another server approaches my partner, and our soft skin is penetrated simultaneously. Their is a slight twinge of pain and then the giant cylinder begins to purr and the fluids on either side begin to merge, forming a spinning rainbowed tornado. I look into the eye of the woman next to me. Her pupil is wide, black and bottomless, and is surrounded by a thin rim of constellated specs of colors, surrounded by a milky haze and endless white. It fills my vision and becomes like a pulsating mandala . . . “a perfect mirror of my own,” and I think my last thought. Slowly, we begin to melt into the rainbow together . . . free from all worry . . . free from death . . . free from life. ♨

I’m in a second story apartment with my friend Helen. She has a beautiful terrace that overlooks a lively and colorful street — the scene makes me think I’m in a city in South America. As we’re talking on the terrace I notice that the shop names below are changing. At first I am baffled, but then this tips me off to the fact that I may be dreaming. Immediately an excited fear pierces my mind. I start looking around in attempt to read the shifting signs above the storefronts. I can’t — they are moving and changing too fast, and the roman letters are taking on different shapes and colors. We move inside and I grab Helen by the waist and she whispers something into my ear and kisses my cheek. I ask her if we are dreaming. She nods with a grin. I’m overwhelmed with a intoxicating sense of freedom. I don’t know what to do: Should I rearrange the dream? Summon the ghosts of old friends? Take flight? Make love with an apparition? All the possibilities scramble my brain and render me powerless. I’m stuck — I know I’m dreaming, but I don’t know how to manage the experience — and now I’m unconvinced that the far off world my body is sleeping in holds any authenticity. I’m also frighted and a deep loneliness ruptures within my body . . . “It’s all only me.”
– – –
I’m driving north on Route 29, heading to 70 west, going to West Virginia. I’m on a motorbike, and I’m not paying attention to the road, occasionally falling into a trance. I snap to and realize that I fell asleep while driving and missed 70. “Where am I? These are hilly dirt roads. How did I get here? This isn’t 29. How did I manage this while sleeping?” I’m still drowsy, and I can barely keep my eyes open. And slowly I realize that every time sleep overtakes me, and my eyes close, they open somewhere else. I’m flopping between two distinct worlds; however the secondary one is very faint. I’m constantly jolting myself back to the one in which I’m driving the motorbike over the dirt roads — it seems more authentic to me, and the one in which it is more pressing that I find my way, the road seems treacherous. I manage to stay awake driving just enough to see that the road ends at the base of a hill at a watery pit. I come to a sliding stop on my bike just before the water’s edge. I see that the dirty shallow water is full of crocodiles. I start getting nervous, and turn the bike around to leave. The dirt on the ground is as fine as powder, and the struggle up the hill is slow and hard. As I’m leaving I see another beast: this one is bodiless and is only the head of a crocodile but its lidless eyes are catlike, huge, perfectly round, and emerald green. I have no idea how, but despite have no body, it is still capable of moving around terribly fast. It’s chomping its gapping jaw and staring at me, into me — and the layered sounds its jaw makes as it chomps are ghastly and loud. I manage to get on top of the hill, but sleep comes for me again. I’m driving — my eyes close and open . . . I am looking out into my room, lying on my bed . . . they close . . . I’m driving on the dirt road, I don’t know where I’m going . . . they open . . . I am lying on my bed. This happens a few more times and then this world, in which I am writing out this occurrence, holds me. And I am left wondering where I’m headed on that dirt road. ♨

I work at a petro station. I hate this job. The hours crawl by slowly. This station is in the middle of nowhere. No one ever comes — there aren’t any customers — but I can’t leave. I don’t know why I’m so tethered to this post. I’m not paid for my time.
Today the sun sank in the sky at an incredibly fast pace. It shouldn’t yet be night right now, but it is. Something strange is happening to Time, very strange. I take advantage of the situation and call my supervisor and explain that I am going to lock up and go home. He seems unmoved by the strange occurrence that’s happening and says that it’s fine since the day is over. He’s an idiot.
I take my leave and walk out into the sunless day. I have no intention of returning to this barren place; and I know in my heart, that this time, I won’t. ♨